312 ESSENTIALS OF BOTANY 
complicated one, consisting, as usually carried out, of the 
following steps : 
(1) Planting the best seed that can be bought. 
(2) Chemically testing average samples of the roots 
grown from the seed of (1) to see if they are good enough 
to breed from. 
(8) Selecting the best single roots by a chemical test. 
Less than one-half of one per cent of all the beets tested 
pass this examination. 
(4) Planting the mother roots selected in (8) for the pro- 
duction of what is called « elite seed.” 
(5) Growing from elite seed small beets which are planted 
to secure commercial seed. 
It requires five years to obtain seed in large quantities 
from the very few selected roots with which the process 
of securing improved seed is begun.1 
Some notion of the thoroughness with which European 
seed-growers choose their beets may be gathered from the 
fact that in 1889-1890 one of the most important firms 
tested 2,782,300 roots, from which it selected only 3043 
to be planted for seed production. Constant pains must 
be taken in maintaining the best possible seed supply, as 
the quality becomes lowered at once when the seed is grown 
without special precautions. Two of the most serious 
ways in which a poor stock of sugar-beets falls short are 
in the low percentage of sugar and in the production of 
many worthless annual plants. In central Europe the 
annual individuals sometimes constitute twenty per cent 
of the entire crop. 
The average yield of sugar from American-grown beets 
is at present twelve per cent or less. Exceptional beets 
1See Yearbook, United States Department of Agriculture, 1904. 
